Wednesday, March 11, 2009

The 2nd grade students learned about the artist Leonardo DaVinci through the book Leonardo’s Horse. Leonardo DaVinci was born in Italy and studied art over 500 years ago. He was an excellent artist but he also was an inventor, musician, philosopher, astronomer and a mathematician. He loved to draw and paint. He had to mix his own paint with things from nature, such as berries and mud. He wrote backwards because he did not want anyone to steal his ideas. Leonardo DaVinci loved nature and animals, especially horses. He was suppose to create a giant horse for the Duke of Italy but it was ruined in a battle and he never was able to complete it.

The 3rd grade students learned about the artist Keith Haring. He loved cartoons as a child and created many paintings with people in them. He only did the outline of the people and did not add any details. He started off doing black and white chalk drawings in the subways of New York. Later he began to create color in his paintings. He loved to add patterns using lines and shapes to create UNITY throughout his art. The students learned what a mural is and looked at many of the murals Keith Haring painted. We also studied the many different color groups: primary, secondary, warm, cool, complimentary and analogous. The students created four people in crazy positions and then were able to choose four of the color groups to use in each of their rectangles. Finally students were able to add patterns in their people and backgrounds.

The 4th grade students learned about aboriginal art. Aboriginal art originated in Australia over 30,000 years ago. Many of the aborigines traveled long distances and recorded their travels by using symbols. The symbols they created using only lines and dots. Aboriginal art has many of the earth tone colors because they used to make their paint from materials in nature. UNITY and REPETITION are seen throughout the aboriginal art we looked at because of the repeated dots used to create symbols. The students were able to create their own piece of aboriginal art using dots and earth tone colors!